Ted Lasso is one of those shows with the exceptional characteristic of creating such heartwarming and positive storylines and, at the same time, never being too far from the real world. The loved show will end after the third season, which is currently ongoing. Jason Sudeikis, creator, and lead actor on the show, stated to Deadline, “This is the end of this story that we wanted to tell, that we were hoping to tell, that we loved to tell.” But Ted Lasso fans don’t have to become desperate, as talks about possible spin-offs with their favorite characters are not off the table.
Because the show’s characters and their stories feel so grounded in reality, a few people wondered if it was based on a true story. Many movies and television shows based on real life are released every year. However, there isn’t only one way of taking inspiration from something that occurred to you, and Ted Lasso is one of those cases. Not letting real life be in the way of creativity and great fictional storytelling, the show is a great balanced mixture of influences.
Here’s how Sudeikis used people from his own life and professional coaches to create the funny show and how, sometimes, real life gets inspired by shows like this one.
Is Ted Lasso Based on a True Story?
Ted Lasso is in its third and final season. The story is about an American football coach, Ted Lasso, who was hired to be the new coach of the English soccer team AFC Richmond. However, there is only one problem: he doesn’t know anything about soccer, as he was a football coach in the United States.
Ted manages with sheer positivism and the ability to read people to not only do his job but to steal the characters and viewers’ hearts. The character makes the audience question if they could ever see life differently, and many wonders if this was based on a true story, as there are a few sports-focused shows based on real occurrences. And while no, there hasn’t been an American coach moving to England to coach there, Ted Lasso was based on some people from the show’s creator’s life. One of the big inspirations for the iconic mustache Lasso has comes from a few people, including Sudeikis’ father.
Emmy winner actor and writer Jason Sudeikis had a basketball coach from when he was in high school, Donnie Campbell. The real coach and Ted Lasso share many qualities: the mustache and being Midwestern, but the most important one is talking in aphorisms. “He was a fella from a small town in Kansas who spoke in those aphorisms, like, ‘Sudeikis, you look more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,’” explained Sudeikis to Today. His high school coach also loved to talk about John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, which was something the Sudeikis not only added to Lasso’s office but used in real life as well.
Campbell was not the only coach that inspired the writer, as influential coaches such as Jürgen Klopp, Bill Self, Pep Guardiola, and Steven Karr also influenced the making of the show’s lead character and his tactics. The idea of taking the players to a karaoke game came from something Klopp did in real life.
Real Life Inspired By Fiction
While the show’s overall plot was not inspired by something that really happened, sometimes it is the other way around. There are many similarities between a recent success story and the series. Two Hollywood actors bought a soccer team, and the results they achieve after barely three years are nothing short of a season finale of Ted Lasso.
In 2020, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought a small soccer team located in the West of Wales called Wrexham Association Football Club. The team hasn’t had the best few years: it hasn’t played in the English Football League for over a decade. However, one recent game could change it all — and it did. After their opponent scored a goal, Wrexham turned the tables and won with a spectacular and deeply emotional 3 to 1 score. Reynolds and McElhenney were watching the match live and shed a few tears when it ended, and the team had secured its spot in the English Football League.
The actors’ journey with Wrexham was the subject of a documentary, Welcome to Wrexham, produced by Disney+ and FX. Their success with the team and the documentary also helped boost tourism in the small town of Wrexham.
Sports Shows Based on Real Life
While Ted Lasso is not completely based on real life, some other sports shows focus on depicting reality. For soccer (or football) lovers, The English Game is a great watch. The 2020 miniseries focus on how soccer was for an elite class in the 19th century and the journey of a few friends to popularize the game and become of the most popular sports worldwide.
But, if want to watch a show about a different sport, Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty is another option. The series follows the Lakers in the 1980s and how they became one of the biggest basketball teams of that decade. It’s important to remember, nevertheless, that these shows are a dramatization of what happened, and so not to be taken literally as a documentary, for example.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
